Firefox 6 'Released' Two Days Early

Itching to get your hands on the next major revision of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser? The official release for Firefox 6 is scheduled for this Tuesday, but Mozilla has already thrown up the installation files on its FTP for industrious and impatient users to download and install. Here are the links for the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of the browser: Have at it!

Unfortunately, a setup program isn't release notes, so what exactly are you going to see in this next iteration of the browser? A lot of the changes coming in Firefox 6 are under-the-hood fixes designed to increase the speed and compatibility of the browser. For example, Firefox 6 will now speed up its startup time for those with a ton of tabs and groups: Users will be able to decide whether they want to load up all of their tab groups at the browser's launch, or load these tabs up within the browser's Panorama grouping tool.

A new permissions tool (accessed by typing "about:permissions" in the browser's address bar) will give users a chance to set site-specific permission levels for saved passwords, cookies, location-sharing, pop-ups, and images, to name a few options. Tweaks to Firefox's add-on manager includes the addition of a brand-new plugins check, which will let uses automatically verify whether they're running the latest versions of all of their extensions with but one click of the mouse.

The final "big change" that non-developer Firefox users will notice is Mozilla's new treatment of domain names within the browser's address bar. Domain names are now tinted with a small highlight, just to make it easier for users to tell what site they're on after a quick glance at the address bar.

Other improvements to Firefox 6 include a performance boost for Linux users, as well as increased support for developers in the form of a Scratchpad tool for testing JavaScript within the browser and an improved version of the browser's Web Console.